The Nice Things People Say…

"...finally a male erotic author who knows how to describe nuances of sight, sound, smell, texture, who knows how to build up a story, build up tension and who finds all the right words at the right time. And finally an author who can balance so very well along the fine tightrope between erotic writing, plain smut, romance and sensuality..."V (a reader)

"...one of the standout ’strictly’ male erotic blogs that are out there, and I highly recommend it."Dark Scribe Speaks

"This is fine erotica, well written, very sexy, all packaged in a nice blog format that makes me jealous."Sexy Blog Reviews

"...ladies, you'll be feeling pretty oversexed after you read this..."Nattyboo

"I absolutely love EasilyAroused...the way he writes makes you feel as if you are right there, a part of the story..."20 Something Girl

"...if you’re looking for something to distract you from the monotony of real life and hope it involves spanking, the ripping of various items of clothing, hot lesbian sex, hot hetero sex, naughty wives, naughty husbands, and the occasional pair of thigh highs, then I sincerely suggest you check out his exceptionally well written blog..."When the Lights Go Down…

"Call that a Blog? (Ladies, your attention please - you will thank me ) This is a Blog!"Ms Hermes

"There are so many wonderful things to say about this blog that I don't know where to begin...Maybe the best way to say it is..He makes me want to have sex with him over and over and over again."Speak Sexy

"EA has a wonderfully sensual quality in his writings (the sexy beast of a man, grrr!) totally unique in that he somehow balances the sexually provocative flavour of his writing style, fluid and deliciously exploratory, with intelligent phrasing, selective word choice, even his pacing is remarkably concise. Rather well done we think."We Were Wolf

"Oh, dear sweet mercy! I read this over, and over, and over again... dirty, little wench that I am. And did I use it to my own sweet satisfaction? Did I read it until I was drenched in my own desire and trembling? Did I enjoy the imagery and fantasize we were the characters to maximize my breathtaking climax? Hmmm...*smile*, if you have to ask, sweets, then you really don't know me..."Jen Raine

"'EasilyAroused' has a wonderful way with words ... So sensual, so arousing ... Left me breathless..."J

"His 'smutica' leaves me in a quivering heap in the corner (that's a good thing)."B

"I’ll admit it. I have a thing for English dudes ... and I love The Whisper of Nylon by EasilyAroused"TGP

"'Easily Aroused' is definitely a good title for this site. I don't know what it is but sometimes the words really get to me, he puts me there at the scene he's set ... I do a lot of purring if I visit it in the right mood."NaughtyGirl

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Hotel Sex

He telephones her to give her precise instructions on what lingerie she is to wear when she comes to his hotel room the next day: brilliant white brassiere and suspender belt, sheer black nylon stockings, and no panties. Each item is to be purchased especially for the occasion. She won’t have to account for their purchase; he has already decided that he will be keeping each garment for himself.

He hears the breath catch in her throat as he describes the menu to her.

“Why white lingerie and black stockings?” she asks.

He could tell her that it’s the visual aesthetic of the two conflicting colours colliding which appeals to him. He could explain that he finds something wanton, even sluttish, in the combination. He could even reveal to her how – as a younger man – an older woman he used to work with seduced him whilst attired in the very same ensemble, which she employed to devastating effect. Whenever he permits himself to explore his memories of that night, he always ends up shivering from his recollections of the delights to which she opened his eyes and his senses.

In the end, he simply says, “Because that’s what I want. Questioning my decision has already earned you a rebuke. Would you like to find out what happens if you choose to disobey me?”

He smiles as he listens to her breathing at the other end of the line. He knows that the wilful streak within her is tempted to ask another question, is tempted to turn up tomorrow wearing something in scarlet or black or navy blue, just to vex him and earn his displeasure. In the end, though, she simply says, “No” in a voice just shy of simpering. Her tone alone is enough to stiffen his cock.

* * * * * * *

The knock at his hotel door comes at 6.15pm. He opens the door. She stands a foot outside the threshold, dressed in a white blouse and charcoal grey pencil skirt. She’s almost as tall as he is in her stiletto heels.

He moves the cuff of his shirt away from the face of his watch. “You’re fifteen minutes late.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

There’s a glimmer of defiance in her eyes. He wonders how long she waited in the lobby before she walked into the lift, just to be certain that she wouldn’t arrive on time.

He doesn’t call her on her lie, though. He steps back and extends his arm, inviting her inside, locking the door once she’s safely inside.

She looks around the room. Apparently satisfied, she drops her handbag onto the low coffee table and turns to face him. When he doesn’t say anything or move towards her, she folds her arms across her chest, raising her breasts invitingly.

“Don’t you want to kiss me?”

“Not yet. Take off your blouse and your skirt.”

Again, there’s a hint of defiance in her expression and her demeanour. She’s a woman used to exerting control, not yielding to it, and that aspect of her nature is refusing to concede without a struggle. But he can see the excitement in her face too, and he knows that some of her exhilaration is due to the yin and yang conflict going on inside her. The rest of it is her desire to surrender control, to be relieved of any responsibility for her pleasure.

She begins to unbutton her blouse, elegantly flicking each pearly disc open. Peeling the cotton from her shoulders, she drops it casually on top of her handbag and then reaches behind her waist. She releases the single button and draws down the zip on her skirt with an electric crackle. The skirt slides down her nylon-sheathed legs with a delicious hiss.

“Like?” she asks.

He does like. The white lingerie gleams wonderfully against her lightly tanned skin, and the part-lace cups of her brassiere cradle her full breasts wonderfully. Her taut nipples are hardening already. The narrow strip of dark curls on her naked mound naturally invites his gaze towards her stockinged thighs. The contrast between her lingerie, white and black, light and dark, is as visually rewarding as he had planned.

But he speaks nothing of his satisfaction or his pleasure. Instead, he points to the expanse of bed. He’s already stripped it back to the tight white sheet across the king-sized mattress.

“Lie down just there.”

She does as instructed, walking deliberately to the edge of the bed. She kneels down slowly, her curvaceous buttocks offered to his eyes as she shuffles into the centre. She stretches out languidly on her belly. He’s pleased that she’s kept the stilettos on her feet.

“Now what?”

He walks to the head of the bed and retrieves a single pillow. “Raise your arse up,” he tells her.

After a few seconds, she complies. He slips the pillow into the space beneath her loins. “Lie back down.”

Again, she complies. Now her arse is lifted invitingly.

“Better,” he says. “Much better.”

He brings the palm of his hand down against her buttocks with a crack.

“Ow!” She spins her head to look at him, her eyes burning in spite of the gathering moistness.

“That’s for asking me questions you’re not entitled to.” He cracks the flat of his hand down again against her arse once more, bringing another gasp of surprised pain. “And that’s for being late when I told you what time I wanted you here by.”

He looks down at her skin, where the hand-shaped patches of red are already flowering across her milky skin. More contrast. He smiles.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. In spite of his actions, his even tone hasn’t deviated one note. “Just do as you’re told. And know your place.”

She turns to look back towards the headboard. He sees a glistening droplet fall against the pillowcase, leaving a small circle of dampness that slowly spreads across the cotton.

“Yes,” she says.

He raises his hand again until it’s level with his shoulder. “Yes what?”

“Yes … Master.”

“That’s better.”

He lowers his hand slowly, until his palm is just touching the warm flesh of her behind. He strokes the redness tenderly. He slips his hand lower, his fingers easing their way between the tops of her thighs. The lips of her sex feel distended, and when he finds the cleft that lies between them, it’s already slick with viscous lust. She gasps at his touch. His cock twitches lustfully at the sound. He wonders how much she is already enjoying the contrasts of sensation, how much she will enjoy the contrasts that are yet to come.

He selects a table with just two seats towards the rear of the hotel’s bar. He debates the wisdom of choosing one this far from the entrance, concerned that she might feel confined, even trapped, so far from the sanctuary of the street. In the end, he decides that having sufficient privacy to talk is worth the risk.

He places his wide tumbler of bourbon down on the table and watches the entrance. He’d wanted to meet her off her train at Kings Cross, but she rejected the offer. She had some things she needed to do first. She’d meet him somewhere in the city later on. Where? He’d thought about suggesting one of a dozen neutral bars or restaurants he knew. Instead, he’d given her the name of the hotel he’d chosen. There seemed little point in being coy.

When he looks up from checking his watch for the fifth time, she’s standing in the bar’s entrance, scrutinising the other customers, looking for him. She’s wearing a dark blue dress, buttoned along the length of its front, and black leather knee-high boots. She looks casual and very feminine. His heart beats a little faster.

She sees him. Her expression freezes. For a moment, he’s afraid that she’s about to turn tail, to show him her back and walk, no, run, from the hotel and back out into the neon-threaded light.

She doesn’t turn away, though. Her frozen expression melts as she smiles. She begins to walk towards him.

He gets to his feet.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hello.” She smiles again. “Finally.”

“Finally.”

Her hand is small and soft and warm in his. She leans forward, turning her head slightly to offer him her cheek. He presses his lips chastely against her smooth skin. She smells of Chanel Allure. His pulse is a teenager’s again.

“What can I get you to drink?” he asks.

“A vodka and tonic, please.”

He returns to the bar and orders the drink. He’s greedy to refresh his memory of how she looks, but he doesn’t want her to catch him scrutinising her. He wonders if she’s looking at him. The urge to turn around feels like a million fire ants crawling around inside his skull.

He carries the drink back to the table and sits down directly opposite her. “Cheers.” The clink of the glasses meeting sounds louder than it ought to. He pulls deeply on his bourbon. She sips nervously at the vodka.

“How was the train journey?”

“Good, thanks.” She puts her glass down on the coaster and slides it an inch away from her. “Certainly better that I was expecting. I managed to get myself a cheap upgrade to first class.”

“Nice.”

“Well, I got a wider seat and more leg room. Oh, and complimentary coffee and a free copy of The Times.”

“That’s just Murdoch’s attempt to take over the rail network as well.”

They laugh, the sound full of genuine warmth on both sides of the table. She looks as relieved as he feels.

“When did you get here?” she asks.

“Just after midday. There’s a film season on at the BFI that I wanted to catch.”

She perks up noticeably. “Which film did you go to see?”

“Les Diaboliques.”

Her smile is a trifle too thin for his liking. “Revenge and betrayal. Interesting choice.”

He shrugs easily. “I like noir cinema, and Les Diaboliques is a favourite of mine. I’ve always wanted a chance to watch it on a big screen.”

She peers at him. “Had you planned to take me with you?”

He laughs. “I wouldn’t have done that to you. I just decided to take advantage of the free time.” He swills some more bourbon and summons a nonchalant tone. “Did you manage to get done what you needed to?”

Her eyes flicker away. “Yes. Thank you.”

An awkward silence settles over them. More than a year has passed since they talked with any real intimacy, and the weight of that knowledge is pressing down on them both, hindering the conversation now that the initial burst of energy at the renewal of their acquaintance has ebbed.

Finally, the lengthening silence compels him to take a chance.

“You know, I consider the fact that I haven’t made love to you one of the great frustrations of my life.”

“Really?” She seems genuinely surprised. By the change of direction, or the choice of words? There’s a hint of scarlet in her cheeks as she glances down at her glass. “Better a great frustration than a huge disappointment.” Her eyes come back to his and she smiles. “I’m sorry. You probably want to admonish me for that.”

“I wasn’t even going to respond to it.”

They both laugh again.

“I thought you were bound to chastise me,” she says. “You always used to whenever I was negative about myself.”

“You’ve always doubted yourself too much.”

“I can’t help myself.” There’s a fresh bloom of scarlet in her cheeks, but this time when she speaks, her eyes don’t leave his. “But perhaps I just like being chastised?”

Is this the moment when things start to move forward? he wonders. Stick or twist?

“You’re still gripped by hesitation, aren’t you?” he asks.

She doesn’t speak. She just nods.

“I’d to sweep aside that hesitation with my lips, banish your doubts with the sensation of my hands in your clothes. I want to open each garment with measured force, revealing you layer by layer until you’re finally – finally – naked before me.”

She gasps. “Measured force sounds lovely.”

“The thought of being fully dressed while you’re lying naked before me … it’s making my pulse throb more deeply than anything has for what feels like an age.”

The tip of her tongue traces the centre of her upper lip. “I like the imbalance of that image. Very much.”

He looks around quickly to make sure that they’re still alone, that there’s no one close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation.

When he speaks again, it’s in a low, measured voice.

“I want to lie over you, still fully dressed while I kiss your mouth, your neck, your shoulders … slowly working my way over your breasts and across your belly … down the inside of one thigh and then back along the other … parting the folds of your sex with my tongue and plunging it deep inside your cunt, coaxing your orgasm with the flicker of my tongue over your clitoris … feeling your thighs tightening on either side of my head, listening to your sighs and gasps of pleasure building to a crescendo. And then I’ll stand up so that you can watch me as I slowly undress.”

She raises her glass with a hand that trembles lightly and swallows half of the remaining liquid. “God, that’s lovely.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

She nods. “I’d love to watch you like that,” she says in a voice that’s mostly whisper. “I’d love to look into your eyes and then up and down your body as you undressed for me.”

“I want you to have that moment. I want to feel the heat of your gaze, to see the desire, the lust, the naked wanting in your eyes.”

Her gaze narrows fractionally as she looks at him. “I’d probably touch myself as I watched you.”

“Good. I want to see your fingers showing me where you want me, where you need me, as you watch me approaching you. Steadily, relentlessly, unstoppable in my burning desire, my cock hard and thick, eager to take you, to claim you, to leave its mark within the wet mystery of your cunt.”

“Oh God,” she whispers. Her eyes dart left and right. “I want you to watch my mouth as I tell you how wet I am, as I tell you how much I want you to fuck me.” She swallows some more of her vodka. “I love to say fuck. And cock. And cunt.”

“I remember.” He’s aware of just how hard he is already. He yearns to feel her hand gripping his length tightly, wantonly. He suppresses a shudder. “I want to hear you saying those words to me, gasping them to me.”

She looks back over her shoulder as she leans conspiratorially towards him.

“Do you still want to hear me begging for your cock too?”

He swallows with some difficulty. “You know that I do. I’m hard now, just from being near to you, just from talking to you. Just imagining hearing you saying those words to me … it sends the most delicious shivers coursing down my spine, all the way to my balls.”

She looks down at the tabletop. “That’s such a lovely thought: your cock all big and hard and only a couple of feet away from me.”

“It’s hardly the first time you’ve made me hard, is it?”

She smiles, a little wistfully he thinks. “No. But this is the first time that I’ve done it when I’m within touching distance.”

“Very true.”

Her eyes – the colour of crystal jade – hold his unwaveringly.

“I’m ever so wet.”

“I’ve always enjoyed making you wet,” he says. “Even though I was never there to enjoy you. I relish the thought of you being wet because of me. Because you want me, because you need me inside you, fucking you soft and slow, then hard and relentless, the two waxing and waning into each other until they become indivisible.”

He sees her swallow, sees her hands convulsing against the varnished tabletop. “Yes. Oh, yes.” She looks around herself again. “What I really want now is to sit in your lap, facing you, with your thigh between my legs.”

“So that you can slip back and forth against my leg? Coating my thigh with your lust?”

“Yes. So that I can say, ‘Feel how wet I am. Hot and wet and all because I’ve been thinking about your cock.’”

He smiles, overwhelmed by the thought of her words combining with the sensation of her soft wetness against his naked skin.

“You could rub yourself against any part of my body you desired. My chest … my abdomen … the small of my back.”

She grins shyly. “You would smell of me. I’d be all over you.”

“I know. I want that. I want to smell how excited you are. I want to bathe in the scent of your desire.”

She leans a little closer. “Perhaps I’d touch myself and then offer you my fingers.”

“I’d suckle on them like a hopeless drunk.”

She laughs. “Then I’d kiss you and taste myself from your lips.”

“And what if I finger you to a shuddering climax and slowly draw a dripping fingertip around the edges of your mouth?”

“That would be lovely too.” She licks the edges of her mouth, just as he has described doing with his fingertip. “Would you look into my eyes as you fingered me? As I came all over your fingers?”

“Yes. Yes.” He looks at her as earnestly as he knows. “Do you honestly have any doubts left about whether I still want to fuck you?”

She glances away, perhaps with a touch of embarrassment. “No. I know that you do. Thank you. Thank you for wanting to.”

He snorts. “You don’t have to thank me for anything.”

She nods. “You’ve given me something back. A little self-belief. I think I’ll be able to look at myself in a mirror and see myself as desirable again.”

“You never stopped being desirable.”

“It felt like I did.”

He looks pointedly over her shoulder, towards the lobby and the elevators that lead up to the residential floors. “Come with me now. I promise that you’ll never feel undesirable again.”

“I wanted to meet you in the flesh, finally. To know whether we would still want one another when we moved beyond the emails and the chat rooms and the web cams. To know if the attraction between us would still exist if we actually met face to face.”

“And it doesn’t?” He wants to shake his head to try and clear the confusion. How could he have read her so wrong?

“Yes, it does. As strong as I’d hoped it would. Stronger, in fact.”

“Then … come upstairs with me. Finally. Let this take us where it’s always been heading.”

Her expression is so sincere, it’s almost painful to behold. “I wish you knew just how badly I want to do that. How badly I want to take your hand and let you lead me to one of those lifts. But I can’t.”

“You’re not making any sense to me.”

She smiles. “I know. I’m barely making any sense to myself.” She drains her glass. “I’ve thought about this moment so often. And this is exactly what I’ve always feared: that when I did finally meet you, it would be everything that I wanted, everything that I’ve always promised to myself in every fantasy I’ve ever had.” She reaches out a hand towards his, and when their fingertips touch, he shivers violently. She does too. “That the connection between us would be so electric, so … alive.”

“I still don’t see the problem. There are people who would…” He shakes his head. “I was going to say that there are people who would die for this, but that’s too strong.” He holds her eyes with his. “But there are people who would do almost anything to experience feelings like this, moments like this.” He cups her hand with his and feels the naked energy running between them.

“I know. That’s why it’s so sad that it can never be.”

He sits back from her, breaking the physical connection between them. He has to fight to keep his irritation and his bitterness in check.

“Rachel, I don’t understand you at all.”

“I’m afraid that if I fuck you, if I make love to you, it will be just as electric as this moment. More so. And after that, I’ll want more. I’ll need more. I know I will.”

He leans forward. “Who said that you couldn’t have more? Have I said or done something to make you think that this is a one-time deal?”

“You don’t understand.” Her voice – still low – is full of resentment and pain. “If it was as good between us as I think it would be, then I could never go back to my life. I would have ruined it forever. Yes, it’s bland and it lacks passion and electricity, but right now, I can live with it. I can survive it. But if you help me to see just how good things could be, how good they should be…” Her eyes close resignedly. “Then I could never go back to that blandness and hope to survive.”

He slumps back in his chair. Finally, he sees the sanity in the midst of the madness. He wonders what he should say. In the end, he says nothing. There’s nothing to say. She’s said it all already.

She gets to her feet. “You won’t try and follow me, will you?”

He shakes his head.

“You always were chivalrous.” She smiles one last time. “Goodbye, then.”

“Goodbye.”

He watches her leave, feeling the ache growing inside him until the pain is almost overwhelming. There’s a part of him that wants to run after her, to catch her and kiss her and make her change her mind. But to do that would be utterly selfish, and therefore unforgivable, by either of them.

Only when he can’t see her any longer does he get up and return to the bar. He orders a double bourbon.

“And another for the lady?” the young bartender asks.

“No.” He hands over a twenty-pound note.

“Too bad. She looked really nice.”

“She was. Is.”

The bartender hands him his change. “You must be frustrated.”

He thinks for a moment before he speaks. “Sometimes, it’s better to experience a great frustration than a huge disappointment.”

The bartender cocks his head. “Is that a quote from Shakespeare or something?”

He smiles sadly as he turns away from the bar. “No. Just something that a friend said to me once.”

Not for the first time that evening, he opens the brown envelope and draws out the photograph that she’s mailed to him. He lets his eyes flow across the curves of her body, sheathed in clinging scarlet silk.

The accompanying note tells him that the gown was purchased for a ball she’s due to attend the following weekend. She’ll be on her husband’s arm, at least as far as the end of the reception line. He strokes a fingertip across the glossy surface, wondering if her husband will truly see the woman beside him, even when she’s dressed to devastate.

He studies her, and as he does so, he imagines himself amongst the party-goers, anonymous in black tuxedo and bow tie. He imagines the other men watching her, unable to drag their gazes away from her. He knows what they’ll be thinking. They’ll be wondering what it would be like to slip their hand inside the long slit on her dress and onto the warmth of her thigh. They’ll be wondering what it would be like to be alone with her, to take hold of the gown’s zip and draw it slowly downwards until the dress slides down her body and pools at her feet.

He holds the photograph at arm’s length. She’s naked under the silk, and he’s certain she’ll be dressed the same come the night of the ball. She’ll want to achieve that same seamless blending of silk and skin. He can picture the men watching her rear whenever she glides by, trying to discern whether – if they were fortunate enough to be allowed to undress her – they would see her utterly naked except for her stockings when her gown reached the floor.

And what would he be thinking if he were there? He’d be wondering what she was thinking when their eyes locked across the room, whether she was impatiently waiting for the opportunity to slip away somewhere private, so that he could undress her, so that she could release his hard cock from his trousers and guide it inside the soft, wet folds of her greedy-to-be-pleasured cunt.

He pictures himself escorting her to the hotel lift, knowing with absolute certainty that before the doors slide open on her floor, he will have kissed her and slipped his hand through that alluring slit to stroke her thigh – and maybe higher. He also knows that he will have guided her hand to his loins, so that she can experience how hard she’s made him.

He closes his eyes, experiencing the thrill of locking the door to her suite, knowing that a few floors below them, her husband and the rest of the partygoers were still drinking and carousing, completely unaware that he was undressing her, making her naked, making her wet, making her come with his lips and his tongue and his fingers, and then sliding his thick cock inside her.

He draws a sheet of rich cream paper towards him, undoes the cap of his Mont Blanc Starwalker fountain pen, thinks for a few seconds with the rhodium-plated nib paused above the paper, and then he begins to write.

Will the thought of making me hard bring a smile to your lips? Smile then, because I’m as hard as steel right now, thinking of you at your ball, striding past all those hungry eyes. You’re too astute not to see them. Will their hunger make you moist, or will they merely make you conceited?

How’s that smile of yours? Wanton? Desirous? Lustful? Carnal? I find myself hoping that it is all of those things, and more.

What if I were to come to your precious ball? How would you feel if you saw me across the room, talking to another woman, perhaps to one of your friends? Would you feel a ripple of jealousy? Would you quickly find an excuse to interrupt, to somehow lead me away from the throng towards the lift upstairs?

What if we were inside the lift, the vibration of distant machinery raising us towards the stars? Would you be content to see my erection pressing against the front of my trousers, or would you be too eager to feel it in your hand? Would you grasp me through the material, measure my thickness, my firmness? How long would you be able to resist unzipping me? And then what would you do? Simply slip your hand inside my trousers and grip me through my shorts? Or would you be too greedy, too frantic to settle for that? Would you want to feel my naked cock against your palm, to wrap your fingers around my bare, aroused flesh?

And once you’d led me to your room and locked the door … what then? You told me once that you wanted me to take you firmly over a bed or a chair … to thrust into you while I held you about your waist, holding you where I wanted you, fucking you hard. Would you want that? To slowly undress yourself while I watched, and then lean over the end of the bed, your palms against the counterpane and your buttocks offered towards me? Would you cup and caress your own breasts while you waited for me to enter you, while you waited to feel my cock pressing against the cheeks of your arse, thrusting slowly against your taut skin? Would you reach down between your parted thighs and finger yourself slowly, strumming your clitoris as your teeth bit down into your lip? Would you hold the lips of your sex open for me as you looked back over your shoulders into my eyes, as you quietly asked me to fuck you long and hard? Would you tell me what you were feeling, what you wanted to feel? Would you guide my hands onto your breasts so that I could hold you, cup you, squeeze you, pinching your hard nipples between my fingers and thumbs? Would you press my hand against your mound, show my fingers the way to your clitoris so that I could pleasure you as I fucked you? Would you show me how you like to be stroked and caressed, how to make you come so that your body trembles uncontrollably, so that you can’t contain your cries of pleasure? Would you press your own fingers against the underside of my shaft as I climaxed inside you, so that you could feel every pulse, every throb? And after I’d withdrawn … would you press your fingers inside yourself so that you could feel my warm seed, so that you could rub it over your clitoris and the lips of your sex, bringing yourself to another orgasm as I watched, panting?

He scans his words and, satisfied, signs his name. He addresses a matching envelope to her workplace and slips the folded letter inside. As he moistens the envelope’s seal with his tongue, his eyes settle upon the engraved ball ticket that sits upon his desk…

The husband stares blankly at the open newspaper in his lap. He’s already tried reading the main article in front of him a dozen times, and each time he’s stuttered to a halt after little more than a couple of lines. The article may as well be written in Lithuanian.

He glances up at his wife. She’s sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed, looking out at the snow-blanketed world through the window on her left. He regards her profile. She looks calm, almost serene. She is a vision of absolute composure.

Is that how she’s really feeling? he wonders. Composed? Serene?

The creatures deep inside the husband’s abdomen flutter and scurry, and he knows there’s no way that his nervousness isn’t being translated and transmitted by his face. Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t looked at him in so many minutes: she’s offended by his fear.

Of course, she has every reason to feel assured. She’s the one with prior knowledge, the one with experience. It gives her the power and leaves him feeling as if he’s only along for the ride, even though he fully endorsed this trip.

The husband checks his wristwatch.

“It’s three minutes later than the last time you checked,” his wife says in a voice half an octave above being utterly flat. He looks up guiltily, and sees that her attention is still fixed to the brilliantly white view through the window.

He can’t maintenance his silence. “Aren’t you nervous at all?” he asks.

“Of course I am.”

“You don’t seem it.”

“I’ve had more practice at masking my apprehension.”

Whether she intended it or not, it’s a reminder to him. Normally, he remains behind when she goes off in search of adventure. The thought sends twin ripples of conflicting emotion through him: arousal at having such an extremely sexual woman for his wife, and jealousy that her appetites often compel her to find satisfaction at the hands of others.

For once, though, the husband will be there to see her satisfaction for himself. It’s a prospect that both thickens his cock and leaves his armpits damp in spite of his antiperspirant.

There’s a solid knock at the door. His wife gets up and crosses the room swiftly. In her white blouse and her black pencil skirt, she might be dressed for a business conference, or a new exhibition at one of the local galleries. Her husband doubts that anyone one who saw her right now would imagine she is about to be sexually pleasured by two men.

The door swings inwards, and the man filling the doorway steps inside the room. She closes the door just as swiftly, locks it and then slips the security chain into place. The ‘do not disturb’ card is already hanging from the handle in the corridor. It should be enough to guarantee them the privacy they need.

The husband folds his newspaper and stands up to greet their guest. The visitor’s handshake is firm, and no more. There’s a light dusting of snow on the shoulders of his heavy coat. He takes it off and hangs it from the hook on the back of the door.

The two men appraise one another. They’ve met only once before, in altogether more platonic circumstances. Neither of them had the slightest idea of where that encounter was destined to lead them. Since then, though, the visitor has fucked the woman half a dozen times that her husband knows of, each of them with his acquiescence. He’s imagined their couplings more times than he can readily count; today, he won’t need to rely on his mind’s eye to see their flesh join.

He stuffs his hands deep into his pockets before their trembling can shame him.

Are we really going to do this?

Fortunately, there isn’t time to draw out the pleasantries. The husband is relieved: any delay might allow his doubts to ambush and overwhelm him. Instead, he sits back down as he wife steps up to their guest and kisses him full on the mouth. The sight of her passionately kissing this pseudo-stranger as she begins unbuttoning his shirt makes her husband’s senses lurch, as though he’s standing on the deck of a wildly pitching boat. Watching the visitor’s hands move familiarly to the buttons on his wife’s blouse only increases the strength of his bewilderment.

How is it possible to be aroused and dismayed all at once?

The husband watches as his wife finishes with the last of her lover’s shirt buttons and sets about unfastening his belt. Can she feel her husband’s eyes upon her, burning into her? What would she make of his expression if she could see it? What would he make of it himself? Which emotion would be sketched most obviously upon his visage? Lust or dismay?

As though she has plucked the thought from his mind, she turns to face him, her eyes half-closed with delight as the stranger kisses his way down the side of her slender neck. Her blouse is fully undone now, and the visitor pulls the two halves apart and then cradles her breasts through her black brassiere. With the practiced skill of the consummate philanderer, he eases the cups down until he’s exposed her hard, dark nipples. He plays with them adroitly, strumming them lightly with his thumbs, squeezing them until they stand even prouder. The woman gasps, and she grinds her arse back against the visitor’s loins; he responds by slipping his large hand over her mound.

The visitor looks up, straight into the husband’s eyes. “Your wife is a very sexy woman.”

The husband nods. A part of him wants to say Don’t you think I already know that, you fuck? But he doesn’t say that. What he says is, “Yes, she is.” He sounds almost out of breath. “Very.” He looks at his wife, and their eyes meet and lock. He can see the lust gleaming in her gaze. Can she see the same in his? She smiles wantonly, wickedly.

Perhaps she can.

The loins of his jeans feel uncomfortably full. He reaches down and unbuttons the waistband, and draws the zip part of the way down. The urge to touch himself is great, but he resists, uncertain of the etiquette, content to take his lead from the others.

There’s not even a hint of nervousness about their visitor. If the man feels any sort of apprehension, it’s buried beneath layers of assuredness and naked lust. His fingers peel the wife’s blouse from her shoulders and her arms, and then release the fastenings of her skirt and then her brassiere. She’s pantieless, and the visitor plunders her gleaming mound for a few seconds before he steps back from her. He swiftly strips off his shirt and then sets about removing his trousers.

The husband gets back to his feet, eager not to be left behind. He’s enjoying the voyeuristic aspects of the encounter, but the stranger has brought a scent of threat into the room with him, one that is rousing the husband’s competitiveness, his need to assert himself as this woman’s chosen mate. He quickly strips off his own clothes, not hesitating until he’s about to remove his shorts. The possibility that the visitor will be bigger than he is, that – no matter what his wife might say or do to convince him otherwise – her preference will be for her lover’s cock and not his, makes him want to call an end to proceedings right now.

He looks at his wife – on her knees, dressed in nothing but the black suspender belt, her stockings and her black patent stilettos – and sees the hunger, the naked desire as she looks back and forth between the two men, and he knows that he cannot possibly say stop now; he does not dare disappoint her.

He strips off his shorts and stands waiting.

His wife looks at both men, and beckons them towards her with a crook of an elegant finger.

Without looking at one another, the two men advance as one.

They stand a foot away from her, eagerly awaiting her inspection, their cocks jutting out proudly, arrogantly, from beneath their bellies. Both are desperate to be the first to garner her attention. The husband glances down and to his right, and he sees that the other man is no better or worse endowed than he is himself; if anything, the husband’s cock is a little straighter, his glans more swollen than his rival’s.

She’s going to feel you more, his mind whispers conspiratorially.

The wife licks her lips, and reaches out with both hands, grasping the men at the same time. Her fingers look tiny against the thickness of the shafts they encircle. The husband shudders when he realises that her wedding and engagement rings are pressed against the stranger’s cock.

She strokes them slowly, lasciviously, still licking her lips. Both men sigh with the pleasure of her touch.

“Do you like that, gentlemen?” she asks, the tenor of her voice dancing mischievously.

The visitor grunts his assent; the husband merely nods enthusiastically.

She smiles. “I guarantee that you’ll like this more.”

She leans forward from the waist, guiding her husband’s cock into her mouth. It’s so familiar a moment and sensation, and yet completely different to any other time she’s sucked him, given that there’s a spectator standing next to him, scrutinising everything, waiting for his turn, that soon the husband will watch his wife pleasuring the visitor’s cock in just the same way.

Slowly, her mouth withdraws from her husband’s hard flesh. He watches breathlessly as she guides the stranger’s cock between her glistening lips, as she takes the majority of his shaft into her mouth. Again, he feels the duality of conflicting emotions: bright red jealousy and jet black excitement. He shudders again, and his wife’s eyes look up and hold his once more as she moves her lips back and forth along the stranger’s prick.

Her husband quickly loses count of how many times she switches her mouth between them. As she sucks one, she strokes the other. Occasionally, she will lean back from both of them, a cock still in each hand, and she looks up at them lasciviously. The pauses never last for long. Her husband wonders if she wants to bring forth their come, to experience their thick semen spurting across her tongue in unison, running down her chin and spilling over her heaving breasts.

She stops again, but this time she gets to her feet.

“I think it’s time for me to have some cock,” she blithely announces.

She sits down on the edge of the bed. She smiles at both men, her fingertips lightly strumming her hard nipples as she waits for one of them to make a move.

Her husband regards their guest. “After you,” he says magnanimously, scarcely able to believe how casual his voice sounds. As if to underline the offer, he walks to the side of the bed and lies down on his wife’s left. He wants to run the sole of his foot across the small of her back, but he doesn’t: that’s too intimate a gesture for this act of congress. This is about lust, about physical pleasure. Emotion must be reserved for another time, another place.

Their visitor doesn’t need inviting twice. He moves forward quickly, as though he’s been waiting for a word of assent or encouragement to release his coiled muscles and nerves. It’s as though a switch has been clicked. The husband watches his rival’s expression, wondering if it would be possible to click the switch back now. He doubts it.

His wife immediately turns around, onto all fours, presenting her rear to her lover. At the same time, she bends her mouth over her husband’s loins, and as his cock slips back into her mouth, the stranger’s cock thrusts deep inside her cunt.

Her breath rushes out around her husband’s hard flesh.

The husband stares, aroused and aghast all at once. She’s fucked other men with his consent before, but actually seeing it… His emotions are a whirlwind, the images in his head a flesh-toned kaleidoscope. He grasps his own shaft with one hand, stroking himself into his wife’s mouth as he lightly grips her hair with the other. He can’t take his eyes from the thick shaft plundering his wife.

The stranger grips her about the waist, and his long, even strokes begin to increase in pace and potency. The wife moans with pleasure, over and over and over. Soon, it’s all she can do to keep her husband in her mouth. He can’t help but wonder if that is part of the reason for the stranger’s vigour.

If it is, then it works. She slips her husband’s cock from her mouth, rubbing the side of her face against his shaft as she cries out, “I’m coming! Yes, fuck, yes!”

The orgasm passes through her. The stranger withdraws from her gasping body. His erect cock gleams with her wetness.

“Your turn,” he says to the husband, with just a hint of arrogance.

Now it’s the husband’s turn to fly out of the blocks. He swings his legs off the bed and walks behind his wife. He strokes the taut cheeks of her behind as he regards the parted, pouting lips of her sex. Well fucked, he thinks, and his cock twitches excitedly. He won’t deny himself any longer. He can’t. He kneels on the bed behind her and thrusts his full length inside her still spasming cunt, a cunt still carrying the imprint of another man’s cock. It’s something he’s fantasised about for years.

“Oh fuck!” she gasps; it’s a sound that brings a smile to her husband’s lips.

Now she’s sucking the stranger again. Her husband can’t see what’s going on, but he can tell that she’s enjoying herself, that she’s fellating her lover with gusto. He knows how much she enjoys tasting herself on hard, male flesh, how she relishes the blending of cunt juice and precum.

He has to slow himself. His excitement at being inside her fucked cunt is carrying him dangerously close to peaking. He buries himself inside her and then pauses, the tip of his glans against her cervix as he reaches beneath her to tease and stroke her clit. After a short time, he feels his control returning. He begins thrusting again, but after a dozen strokes, the stimulation of being inside her is close to overwhelming his resistance once more. He tries pausing again, but the result is the same.

He looks up at the stranger’s face. Is that the suggestion of a smirk on his face? The husband mentally shrugs the breath of paranoia away. It’s irrelevant anyway; the bottom line is, he doesn’t want to come yet. Reluctantly, he withdraws from his wife’s velvet flesh.

She waits a few seconds, and then, when she realises that her husband isn’t coming back inside her for the moment, she moves up over her lover’s body and lowers herself onto his waiting, greedy cock. She doesn’t even glance back as she begins to rise and fall over his length.

Her husband walks to the nearest chair and sits down, watching his wife lose herself within her consuming desire for flesh and fulfilment. He strokes himself at a tempo that matches the leisurely pace she is setting for herself, staring at the thick shaft – slick with her lust – each time it emerges from her body. He suspects that her deliberateness is in no small part for his benefit, that she is pandering to the voyeur within him. It touches him that she still thinks of feeding his hunger in the midst of satiating her own.

Soon, her pace begins to quicken, and her husband sees how hard she is pressing herself down against her lover’s pubis. He looks at her face, sees her eyes screwed tightly shut, sees her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip, and knows that her senses are climbing towards yet another crescendo.

Without warning, her lover reaches up and grips the back of her neck; he tips her over onto her side, then onto her back. He doesn’t wait for her to ready herself; he pushes her thighs wide and thrusts forward, piercing her cunt to her cry of ecstasy. He fucks her hard, savagely, and her husband realises that the stranger is close to reaching his own climax. His laden balls smack against the cheeks of her arse each time he penetrates her, and her breasts bounce wildly in accompaniment.

“Oh, yes! Fuck me hard!” she cries.

The knowledge that the stranger’s semen will soon spurt against his wife’s most intimate flesh, that she wants to feel it erupting inside her, and that he himself can do nothing to stop it, excites her husband more blackly than anything he can ever remember.

He gets to his feet, pumping his cock with a fury he has never felt before. He can feel the pressure building in his face, can feel the sinews standing out along the sides of his neck. He watches his wife’s contorted expression, and then she sees him, sees his pleasure, sees his furious strokes.

“Oh fuck!” she gasps. “Don’t come yet!”

The stranger trembles and emits a drawn-out growl as he spills himself inside her. He withdraws quickly, and her husband looks down at his wife’s dark red, swollen cunt, sees the thick, milky semen already oozing out of her.

Another man’s come in my wife, he thinks.

The sight tips him over the edge. He staggers towards the edge of the bed, almost throwing himself towards her as he explodes, anointing her belly and her pubis with thick streams of his own come. Then, spent, he collapses at her side, gasping for breath as his wife runs her fingers through the seed of two men, blending it against her sex as she uses it to lubricate one final, frantic orgasm.

Slowly, the husband comes to his senses. The stranger is gone, but only as far as the en-suite bathroom. The husband listens to the sound of water flowing into the washbasin. He wonders how long the man will linger. He wants him gone, wants his wife to himself, to fuck her alone and reclaim her as his. But when he looks at her face, he sees that she is still hungry, that the lust within her is yet to be satiated, and he knows that the stranger will be here for some time yet.

The bathroom door opens and the stranger emerges. He smiles at the woman as he walks back to the bed and stretches out on the other side of her.

“Isn’t this a wonderful way to spend a December morning,” he says confidently.

“It certainly is,” the wife answers.

Her husband nods, but he says nothing.

“So would the two of you like me to be on my way now?” the stranger asks. They all know that he’s really only asking the woman.

Just say ‘yes’, the husband thinks.

The woman smiles. “I think I’ve still got some excess energy that needs using up first,” she says, reaching out on either side of her to fondle their flaccid cocks. She turns to look at her husband. “Wouldn’t you say so, darling?”

The look in her eyes, the feel of her hand on his cock and the sight of her hand on the stranger’s are combining to excite him again, almost in spite of himself.

I sit amidst the rumpled Egyptian cotton sheets, my back against the polished Marriott Hotel headboard, watching as she rolls on her black nylon stockings. Left, then right; the elegant reversal of the work I’d done so willingly little more than three hours before. There’s an ache inside me as I watch her, a hint of bitterness in my mouth, because the fact that she’s getting dressed means that our time is over for at least another week; she’s about to return to her life while I slip back into my own.

She stands up from the chair and stretches.

“Where are my shoes?” she asks absently as she walks around the foot of the bed. I’m too busy looking at her to offer any sort of constructive suggestion. The stockings accentuate her nakedness so deliciously that I’m becoming hard again, in spite of the two highly satisfying orgasms I’ve already poured into her.

“You’re no use,” she pouts after a few seconds of fruitless searching.

“Maybe you shouldn’t dress like that.”

“This is a pair of stockings. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You shouldn’t wear that body.”

She smiles, but she says nothing as she continues to scout for her stilettos.

Ignoring her nakedness and my erection is not easy, not even for a few seconds. “Try under the bed.”

She looks at me quizzically, and then her eyes gleam as she remembers how her shoes got there.

“You’re a very bad man,” she chides softly.

“I know.”

She retrieves her shoes from beneath the bed, slips them on and then walks into the bathroom. The three-inch heels raise her ass invitingly, but before I can compliment her on the view, the door closes between us. I shut my eyes and listen to the sound of water filling the wash basin. She never showers after we fuck, preferring to stand at the sink so that she can freshen her face, hands and armpits. She once told me that her husband was more likely to suspect something was amiss if she went home smelling like she’d stepped out of a shower in the last hour.

“Is that the only reason?” I’d enquired, instinctively knowing there was something more.

Her face coloured, and then she confessed in her little girl, “I want” voice that she liked to smell me on her when she went to bed after our liaisons.

I hear the toilet flush, and then the washbasin taps are turned off. I smile. She always pees under the cover of running water. There isn’t a place on her body I haven’t stroked, kissed, licked, sucked or fucked – all with her wanton complicity and sometimes earthy encouragement – and yet she refuses to allow me to hear her urinating.

I suppose some things are too intimate for strangers to share.

She walks back into the room. Miraculously, her dress lies semi-folded across the one of the two club chairs. The rest of her lingerie is still on the floor where it fell amidst the debris of my own unveiling. She picks out her bra from beneath my shirt and slips it over her arms with practiced grace. Unconsciously, she turns to face me as she reaches behind herself to refasten the clasp. The brassiere’s lace cups are almost totally diaphanous, and the russet circles of her areola are easily discernible, even in the half-light of our clandestine sanctuary.

There’s something so brazenly sexual about a woman dressed in bra, stockings and heels, and no panties. I have to fight the urge to slowly stroke my cock.

“Why are you looking so smug?” she asks, though I can see from her expression that she already knows the answer.

“I’m just enjoying the dazzling scenery.”

She shakes her head, though I can’t recall when she’s ever said ‘no’ to me. “You’re such a lecher.”

“I prefer libertine. Or rake.”

“Oh yes, much more grandiose.” She puts an expensively manicured finger to her lips as she ponders my choices. Her eyes sparkle, eureka-style. “From now on, whenever I email you I’ll call you ‘Rakish Male’.”

I laugh. “I love it. In fact, I’m going to create it as an email address when I get home.”

A shadow flits across her smile; a solitary cloud passing between us and the sun. She half-turns away and scoops up her minuscule panties. She steps into them perfunctorily, pulling them up her slender thighs with an almost unseemly haste.

I watch attentively as she draws the thin waistband into shallow arcs over both hips. “You look good enough to eat,” I tell her.

She says nothing, not looking at me, staring straight ahead towards the windows as she continues to adjust her attire. A sliver of real world is visible through the gap in the floor-to-ceiling drapes; outside, the cyan shade of the mid-afternoon sky has given way to navy blue. The streetlights are on, the faces of the buildings opposite the hotel becoming defined by the squares of fluorescence they contain.

Night is almost upon us.

I try lifting the mood back to where it had been. “I thought you enjoyed my compliments.”

She shrugs as she walks to the window. She holds onto the drapes, widening the gap so that she has a wider view of the twilight cityscape.

“I love this time of day,” she says, sotto voce. “I can feel it in the air; the potential that only comes with nightfall. All the wonderful possibilities that can only exist when the darkness comes. I look out across all those brilliant points of light, and I see the opportunities waiting for me, waiting expectantly for me to choose one of them. I look out across the night and I can taste them.”

I slip from beneath the sheets. It’s late, and we should be getting ready to leave, getting ready to force our way along the damp streets, through the throngs of despairing souls that fill the pavements and platforms between us and the places we live, the brick shells to which we’ve assigned the label ‘home’. But none of that matters to me right now. Her soliloquy has found my heart, caressed my spirit. I know precisely what she means, know exactly what she’s feeling right now. I feel it every time I look out across the city when the sky is sheathed in obsidian.

I brush her hair aside from the nape of her slender neck and press my lips to her warm skin. She smells of the hotel soap, and the Chanel she knows I adore. I gather her breasts in my hands, relishing the hardness of her nipples against my palms. She arches her lithe body against mine, and I press my erection against the welcoming familiarity of her arse.

“Fuck me,” she whispers.

My first thought is to guide her back to the bed.

“No, here. Fuck me so that the world and all its possibilities can see.”

Exhibitionism has never featured in the carnal lexicon we’ve fashioned together. Quite the contrary: we’ve guarded our liaison with almost paranoid precision. We’ve had to: there’s much to lose on both sides. And so the thought of fucking her as she’s asking is both troubling and thrilling in seemingly equal measure.

The most delectable pleasures are those that come marinated in danger.

She widens her stance without needing to be asked. I don’t even consider taking her panties off. I’m too aroused, too impatient to be inside her again. I slip a hand between her thighs, cupping her sex through the thin material. It’s damp with her lust, warm with the radiance of her sex. I ease the flimsy gusset aside, then guide my cockhead towards the velvet slickness within her labia. There’s no need for teasing, no desire to draw out our pleasure. We both want the same thing, want it now.

My length glides effortlessly inside her, as though my cock were fashioned from the very imprint of her cunt.

She hangs onto the drapes, pressing her arse back to meet my thrusts. I quickly release the clasp on her brassiere, slipping my greedy hands beneath the now-loose cups, moulding her full, soft flesh to my grasp. Each time I enter her to the hilt, she gasps with blissful fulfilment; each time I withdraw to the point where the corniced ridge of my glans pulls provocatively upon her labia, her sighs of pleasure sound bitter-sweet. I fuck her with long strokes, my lips and my teeth working upon the collection of delicate nerves where her neck becomes her shoulder. I hear the curtains straining in their tracks, and half-expect them to come crashing down. And through it all, she watches my reflection in the window as I watch hers, and beyond our transparent duplicates, the night watches us both.

I’ve come twice already so I ought to last for an age this time, should have to focus to summon forth my climax. The growing waves of pleasure in my loins belie that supposition.

“You’re coming to come, aren’t you?” she gasps.

“Yes.”

“So am I. Fuck!”

She grinds herself against me.

“Hard. Fuck me hard.”

I piston into her, sinuous smoothness and control forsaken, abandoned. I drop my hands to her waist, yanking her back to meet me, and she releases her hold on the right-hand drape, cupping her sex instead so that her fingertips can feverishly work upon her clit.

“Oh fuck, yes!”

As I begin to come, myriad images flood my mind: I see myself pulling out of her, my cock jerking in my hand as my semen spurts against her anus and her buttocks and the backs of her thighs; I see her whirling around before me, dropping to her knees so that she can capture my seed in her mouth and across her breasts; I see her standing to one side, pumping my cock in her hand so that I ejaculate against the window, my semen running down the glass for all the night-time world to see.

In the end, none of these things come to pass. My cock quivers and pulses within the silken confines of her cunt, and I am grateful, privileged.

My third orgasm, and, in spite of all the pleasure and passion that proceeded it, my most intense.

I pull her tight against my body, my cock still immersed within her heat, futilely wishing that we could spin the clock’s hands backwards and have our three hours again, and yet wondering how to tell her without causing hurt or offence that time is marching forwards regardless of our desires, that we need to go, now, if we’re to safely resynchronise with our real lives.

Of course, I don’t need to remind her of anything; she has just as much to lose as I do. She eases my softening flesh from hers, kisses me tenderly on the mouth, and then walks back to the bathroom without saying a word.

The door closes, and water begins to fill the wash basin.

I use a towel to dry my loins. I’ll go for a hard run when I get home, and then I’ll shower away all the scents of our union. I’ll take her to bed with me tonight, but I’ll carry her in my mind, not on my body. I’m not as brave as she is.

I’m almost dressed by the time she emerges from the bathroom. I tie my shoes as I watch her slipping back into her dress. She does everything with such unconscious grace and femininity. It’s no wonder I find her so beguiling.

“Will you zip me up?” she asks.

“Of course.”

I draw the zip up her back, fighting the temptation to kiss her neck again.

She checks herself in the tall, thin mirror on the wall. Satisfied, she picks up her handbag and walks to the door.

“Ready?”

I nod. I gather my briefcase and the key card for the door from the desk, scan the room one last time and follow her out into the quiet corridor.

The disappointment I feel as the door clicks shut behind us is as black as the night outside.

We ride the lift down to the ground floor in silence, a respectable distance between us. It’s part of the process; disengaging from one life, reintegrating with the other. There’s no alternative, for either of us.

The hotel’s reception area is busy: businessmen and women returning from a long day of meetings and pitches; tourists fatigued from hours of sightseeing; couples embarking upon their own illicit liaisons. Some will want nothing more than the refuge of their rooms; others simply seek the opportunity for revitalisation, a precursor to venturing out once more, this time in search of the city’s nocturnal distractions.

I wish I didn’t have to go home. I wish that I could go out into the night in search of adventure, her hand clutched tightly in mine.

As hoped, no one pays us the slightest attention as we stroll across the expanse of marbled floor and slip out onto the hectic street.

We walk side-by-side to Waterloo Station, from where the Northern Line will carry her out of the city. For me, it’s the Jubilee Line, eastbound.

As we ride the escalator down into the subterranean maze, she turns and looks up at me. The height difference, exacerbated by the escalator’s steps, makes her seem achingly vulnerable.

“I want to spend a whole night with you,” she says. “Soon.”

“I know. I want that too.”

Her eyes glisten brilliantly as she scrutinises my face. “I want to find out what possibilities are waiting for us in the dark. Do you?”

“More than anything.”

Time to part. It’s much too crowded for lingering goodbyes, far too public for us to risk anything but the most casual of separations.

“Soon”, she says again, and then she turns and walks away. Within seconds, she’s gone, swallowed whole by the rest of the world.

I watch the tunnel down which she disappeared for a few more seconds, and then I turn away, heading for the moving walkway which will propel me some of the way home.